Gaddafi Collected Photos of Condoleezza Rice

Apparently former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made quite an impression on former dictator Muammar Gaddafi when she visited Libya three years ago.

As rebels ransacked Gaddafi’s compound this week, they found a photo album brimming with pictures of Rice, whom the former “mad dog” of the Middle East once called “Leezza.”

When Rice met Gaddafi in September 2008 (becoming the first secretary of state to visit Libya since 1953), the two sat together formally for the cameras before later having a late-night dinner in the Libyan leader’s private residence.

The surfacing of the photos has given new meaning to a quote from Gaddafi in 2007, prior to his personal encounter with Rice. Asked at the time why he did not attend Arab summit meetings, Gaddafi appeared at the time to be mocking Rice by remarking that she was in control of the Arab world.

“I support my darling black African woman. I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders,” he told al-Jazeera television in a March 27, 2007, interview. “She beckons to the Arab foreign ministers, and they come to her, either in groups or individually. . . . Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. . . . I love her very much. I admire her, and I’m proud of her, because she’s a black woman of African origin.”

Gaddafi has a long history of admiring women. He surrounded himself with a coterie of female bodyguards known as the “Green Nuns.” In one particularly bizarre incident, while visiting Italy he hired an employment agency to run an ad for “attractive girls between 18 and 35 years old” and 5’7’’ or taller. The 200 women who made the grade showed up at the Libyan ambassador’s residence, where Gaddafi lectured them on why they should convert to Islam. He also gave each of them $75, a copy of the Quran and a copy of The Green Book, in which he expounded on his own philosophy of life.